March 25 - Oahu SCCA Autocross

Those driving books I bought a couple of weeks ago MUST be helping...










(Photos courtesy of Jon and Erin)

This past Sunday was the Championship Runoffs for the 2006 Hawaii SCCA autocross season and the course for this race was another great course for the limited area we have in the Aloha Stadium parking lot.

BMW's are renowned for their braking and I used it to full effect on 2 of the hair pin turns on the course. In fact, as described in the Going Faster book, I tried to trail brake into these hairpins, much more than I ever did in the past, and I was surprised how much the front end squatted down and dug in to those turns!

I also learned that my car is DEFINITELY faster with the traction control FULLY disengaged. In the trade off for a higher chance of a transitional tail happy spin (did it twice that day), you get much better throttle response, especially out of the slow hairpin turns.

My best run of the day, when it counted, was 41.100 seconds. But during the fun runs, I got down to 40.037 seconds with the traction control fully off! UNBELIEVABLY, sans traction control I got over 1 second faster...and all this time I've been running with the traction control only in the semi-off posisiton...

Result: D - Stock 1st Place, for the first time! Guess my tires aren't holding me back as much as I thought!

Overall Results: http://sccahawaii.org/3-25-07.pdf

To Mycarpage.blogspot.com

Hawaiian Style Cherry Blossom

I would say it's about 1/2 the way there...to being the most beautiful tree on the island. This was taken this past Saturday, March 20th, 20 days after the picture below was taken.

It Begins...

Here's the most beautiful tree on the island on March 4th.

Nova M Radio - Founding Member - I Am...

Well I bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and finally anted up the 100 clams so that I can listen to Mike Malloy again...on my terms, via podcast on my schedule...what a relief...NOBODY gives it to the filthy, corrupt, freedom hating, fear mongering, Bush dictatorship like he does!!! Nobody!!!

He's on this new progressive radio station called http://www.NovaMRadio.com free and live, from 3 to 6 p.m. and unbelievably, my next favorite guy, Sam Seder was on right after him at 6, The Majority Report, on tape though. I haven't heard Sam in a while since he's on real early in the morning...good thing I worked late today.

Posted to my PoliticsofPeace blog.

Shhhh...Secrets...

Just got these in from Amazon today...maybe...I'm hoping, they will help in the next autocrosses coming up on March 26th and April 8th.

The March 26th date is the Championship for the 2006 season and I will be running my stocker in the D-Stock class again. Maybe these books can help me overcome my Bimmer's lack of HP, tire width, auto trans, etc. etc. etc....lalalala. I would have much preferred running in the "true" STS street tire class.

The April 8th even is the beginning of the new season and I'm still debating whether to run my wagon in STS or the Eunos in STS2 or CSP...

Titles:

Going Faster! Master the art of Race Driving by Skip Barber (270 pgs) - this book is VERY technical (ie, more words than pictures), but, being an engineer, I love it!

Speed Secrets 2 More Prof. Race Driving Tech. by Ross Bentley (150 pgs) - seems pretty basic for a driving standpoint, with some useless stuff, for me anyways, about marketing yourself and being accessible to fans.

Speed Secrets 3 Mental Strategies to Maximize Your Racing Performance by Ross Bentley (150 pgs) - now this book looks very interesting because it deals primarily with the mental aspect of driving. From a quick scan, many of the points can be applied to other aspect of your life too...more like a driving psychology book.

Of the 3 books, I think the Going Faster and Secrets 3 books will DEFINITELY help in taking it to the next levels...I just hope I can get through them by the 26th...

Saturday and Sunday Riding

On Saturday, it was really cloudy all day, so I didn't get out to 3:30 or so. After riding around for a little over an hour I rode up Tantalus pretty hard. Did a disappointing 24:40, exactly the same time as last week...and I felt pretty strong too. I was looking for a 24:20ish or so...

Today, it started as a cloudy day, but by 2pm, it was beautiful so I decided to do an easy recover ride, and things didn't go as planned.


After cruising around for about an hour I felt halfway decent so I decided to climb Tantalus really easily, at about 200 - 230 watts, just cruising. Got to the top, and decided to go down on the UH side, "thinking" I would just squeeze through the area that their repairing. Fat chance, when I got just past the UH lookout, this is what I found -



P@ck! No...double P@ck...No ways around (they extending a plywood barrier about 20 feet down the embankment to prevent this), above or under...I was screwed...having only a 1/4 bottle of water remaining, and with my legs all packed up from yesterday, I had to slog back to the top of Tantalus...what a way to do a recovery ride...almost bonked too...

Make Art, Not War...

I saw this out of the side of my eye while driving on the freeway yesterday, so during today's recovery ride, I went by to take a closer look.

"Make Art, Not War" and "High Time - Peace" poster at the Makiki Skate Park.

You Dig It Man???


I also watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" last night. What an awesome show.

New Deda 215 Bars

Earlier this week I lost those 46cm ape-hanger bars and put on these new 44cm out-side-to-outside Deda 215 bars. Soooo much better...

And the new white tape looks so much sweeter than that grungy stuff I had on there....

Beautiful Day - South View - Tantalus

The heavy trades and rainy weather of the last couple of days finally left the island last night and today was an absolutely spectacular day.

Headed out the door really late and did about 3 hours of ride time, finishing at 6:30 or so. Timed myself on the Tantalus Time Trial course and did it in about 24m 40 sec....better than the 25m 30 seconds I did 3 weeks ago.

Worked up quite an appetite too...that got quenched at Chili's in Pearlridge Shopping Center with G and D and Gibosama...

Beautiful Day - West View - Tantalus